Frederick Douglass: “There was no reason why I should be the thrall of any man.”

My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.

It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

The day we celebrate is preëminently the colored man’s day.